Maya Katz-Ali charges her Honda Clarity plug-in electric hybrid in Oakland, Calif. (Santiago ... [+]
The U.S. can save so much money in health and fossil-fuel costs by decarbonizing its economy that it makes financial sense to do it regardless of climate change, said one author of a report released today by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
“You want to do this on economic grounds—on cost grounds—even if you don’t care about climate,” said Steve Pacala, a Princeton University ecologist.
The economy needs to mobilize $2.1 trillion in the 2020s to move onto a path that will eliminate U.S. carbon emissions by mid-century. “However this is not a cost,” Pacala said, “and will be largely offset by operational savings.”
Much of those savings derive from the fact that wind and solar facilities, once built, have no fuel cost.
“The fuel is instead free,” Pacala said. “So the owning and operating costs are a factor of ten lower than this $2.1 trillion.”
More savings derive from the health benefits when less fossil fuel is burned.
“Projected energy costs during the 2020s are less than the added health benefits just caused by the transition and reduction in fossil-fuel convention pollutants,” Pacala said.
A recent report from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air links air pollution from burning fossil fuels to 230,000 deaths in the U.S. annually and $600 billion in annual economic losses. The U.S. spends 6 to 7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on energy, but it spends 20 percent on health care, said University of San Francisco Professor James Williams at an earlier National Academies event.
For the average American household, a transition to a clean economy means little increase in cost, according to the new report on “Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States: Technology, Policy, and Societal Dimensions.”
“The incremental cost over the next decade might be as low as a few percent in household expenditures,” said Princeton energy engineer Jesse Jenkins, “even less if we consider oil price changes that might occur as we reduce oil and gas consumption.”
Read more about the report:
